Based on those figures, a bottom rung $16/hr PHP outsourcing firm would have charged over $9000 for the work done sofar. Never mind the difference in quality.

Of course that doesn’t take into account the efficiency and quality you get from modern agile software development processes, or from open source. Which is precisely why we were able to build it at such a low cost.

Thanks for the response. Looks like the 2nd one of the day that’ll cost me. : )
However, both will be well worth the cost. I’ll need a few more days to test the plug-in, and then I’ll get a formal list of requests together. Looks pretty amazing right out of the box though.

It would make sense if that were included with the price of this plugin, but it was not, if we would like to pay for more, that can be arranged. For styling, you can see what I have on the provided links, and I am happy to try to work with folks, but we are in the same boat :) PHP development does not come cheap, and we have all benefitted from folks who have a sense of philanthropy or hobby about provididing plugins, but for folks like the TeamTextpattern crew, they need to make a living :)

Fair enough. Of course they need to charge whatever they see fit to charge, and yes, we all benefit from plugins and the open source solutions. It just seems odd that if one were to pay a lot of money for a plugin no instructions are available on how to use the plugin.

None of our business really, except for the fact that it has been released to the public after a ransom.

zem wrote:

Of course that doesn’t take into account the efficiency and quality you get from modern agile software development processes, or from open source. Which is precisely why we were able to build it at such a low cost.

OK. Hope you keep creating new plugins and expanding on the fantastic TXP. Great work from the developers.

It just seems odd that if one were to pay a lot of money for a plugin no instructions are available on how to use the plugin.

Just for the record, we did provide Matthew with instructions and examples. Our part of the job was delivering software to his specifications and requirements. The ransom and public release is Matthew’s baby.

This is kind of a new thing for all of us. I hope we can keep doing it too.

Is it the case that you don’t have a full list of the tags available and the style elements that we can use with each tag? Wondering, since you obviously paid a lot for this plugin and it would make sense that you got this basic information?

I know where you’re coming from. If I had paid for this plugin from my spec though, I don’t really know that I would have included documentation of the plugin in the spec if they told me they could do it for less without it.

Since I didn’t pay anything though, and I THINK I might be able to use this on the site, I don’t have a problem with opening up the plugin in the edit screen and reading through it to see what the functions (tags) are along with the style elements to use as my own basic documentation. I do this on most of the plugins I use anyways.

If you open up the plugin and for safety, copy and paste what’s on the edit screen into a text file, you should be able to find all the info you need to get started. Zem_event is very well commented. If you think you don’t know PHP, just look at the file. It’s very readable. Look for the functions and you’ll see an array of the attributes for the tag along with the default values. Try it out on a test site and eventually you’ll know what the plugin can do. Besides, If you try something and can’t get it to work the way you think it’s supposed to, you can always ask a question.

I’ve seen a number of plugins that are developed by folks who are obviously very talented php programmers, but are not the most talented of tech writers. Given that I don’t have to pay for it, I’d much rather have a robust plugin with a minimal help file instead of the opposite, because I get much more frustrated with a well documented plugin that doesn’t work. That’s also the reason I’ve started reading old plugin threads backwards so I can see the post that would indicate that the plugin is abandoned or not updated to the new version of txp yet.

Yes, enough said. What happened before the plugin was released is none of our business. I was just surprised because it seemed that no examples had been given to Mathew – or at least that’s how I read it.

Apologies if my questions sounded aggressive – not what I wanted.

Alex, paying for plugins is a great idea. All the recent ransoms have been met quickly where there has been a real need – ebl_batchupload is one example. The potential downside is when a developer stops supporting or updating the pugin. This seems to happens a lot!

If TeamTextpattern were to develop more paid plugins, we could be sure of the quality, support and operability with the TXP core.

Maybe I should start another thread requesting users to list the plugins/extensions that are needed by the community?